Wooden looms appeared in what century. Spinning wheel and loom

05.10.2023

Almost everything we wear is woven from threads. Cotton, wool, linen or artificial. And the threads are turned into fabric using a loom. And it is clear that without this wonderful device we would look completely different. Let us pay tribute to the mechanism that has largely woven our history...

The emergence of looms

Weaving looms appeared in ancient times. Among many peoples among many peoples of Europe, Asia and America. The first loom was vertical. It was a simple frame on which warp threads were stretched. The lower ends of these threads hung freely almost to the ground. To prevent them from getting tangled, they were pulled with hangers. The weaver held a large shuttle with thread in his hands and weaved the warp. This method literally repeated the weaving technique and required a lot of time. Then the ancient masters noticed that this process could be simplified. If it were possible to simultaneously lift all the even or odd warp threads, the craftsman could immediately pull the shuttle through the entire warp. This is how a primitive device for separating threads - remez - was invented. At first, a simple wooden rod served as a hedge, to which the lower ends of the warp threads were attached through one another. Pulling the hedge towards himself, the master immediately separated all the even threads from the odd ones, and then with one throw threw the shuttle over the entire warp. True, during the reverse movement we had to go through all the even threads one by one again. At the same time, it was impossible to simply lead the second rez, because the first would get in his way. Then they began to tie laces to the weights at the lower ends of the threads. The second ends of the laces were attached to the boards, even to one, odd to the other. Now the blades did not interfere with mutual work. Pulling first one and then the other hedge, the master sequentially separated the even and odd threads. The work has accelerated tenfold. The making of fabrics ceased to be weaving and became weaving itself.

Now, with the help of laces, it was possible to use not two, but more rezov. As a result, it became possible to produce not a plain, but an ornamented fabric. The first evidence of the appearance of machine tools with loads dates back to the region of Anatolia and Syria. Cargoes dating back to the 7th-6th millennium BC were found there. The earliest images of a loom and weavers at work are found on the walls of the tomb of Hemotep in Egypt. The age of these drawings is about 4000 years.

The peoples of South America used a machine with weights around the year 1,000 BC. Such a machine was also known in ancient Greece. It was often depicted on Greek vases from the 6th to 5th centuries BC.

In subsequent centuries, various improvements were made to the loom. For example, the movement of the blades began to be controlled by the feet using pedals, leaving the weaver's hands free. However, the fundamental weaving technique did not change until the 18th century.

The origin of the simplest horizontal machine is lost in the mists of time. In the 11th century, an improved design appeared in China, which has come down to us with minor changes. The warp threads on such a machine were tensioned horizontally, hence its name. On a vertical loom, the width of the fabric did not exceed half a meter, and in order to obtain wider strips of fabric, they had to be sewn together.

In turn, the horizontal machine not only increased the speed of fabric production, but also made it possible to unlimitedly increase the width of the resulting fabric. Already in the 12th century, a complex weaving machine came to Italy through Damascus and there it underwent further improvement. For example, they began to align the threads using a hanging comb.

Mechanical loom

In 1272, a method of mechanical twisting of threads was invented in Bologna, which was kept a closely guarded secret by local weavers for the next three hundred years. But the task of inventing a mechanical loom seemed insurmountable until the 18th century. Even Leonardo Da Vinci couldn't invent the power loom. It was only in 1733 that the young English mechanic John Kay made the first mechanical shuttle for a loom. In Russia, such a shuttle was nicknamed the airplane, because the invention eliminated the need to manually throw the shuttle and made it possible to produce wide fabrics on a machine operated by one weaver.

At that time, Kay's invention did not attract support from either English industrialists or weavers, and the London Society of Arts and Industry generally stated that it did not know a single person who understood how to use these shuttles.

Kay's work was continued by Oxford graduate, Anglican church minister and poet Edmund Cartwright. In 1785, he received a patent for a foot-powered mechanical loom and built a spinning and weaving mill in Yorkshire for twenty such devices. Already by the thirties of the 19th century, a lot of technical innovations were added to the Cartwright machine. There were more and more similar machines in factories, and they were serviced by fewer and fewer workers. In Russia, the first mechanical looms appeared at the end of the 18th century. In 1798, the Aleksandrovskaya Manufactory was created in St. Petersburg - the first textile factory in Russia.

The most labor-intensive tasks when working on mechanical machines were changing and charging the shuttle. In addition, the weaver had to constantly monitor the breakage of the main thread and stop the machine to correct the defects. It wasn't until James Northrop came up with a way to automatically charge a shuttle in 1890 that factory weaving made a real breakthrough. Already in 1894, Northrop's company developed and brought to market the first automatic loom. Next came a serious competitor to the automatic machine - a weaving machine without a shuttle at all, which greatly increased the ability of one person to service several devices.

A new era began with the advent of the mechanical loom. If the Middle Ages were the time of the lone artisan, now weaving has become the first sphere of mass production in history. Weaving workshops began to grow into factories. The rapid development of the cotton industry caused a rapid influx of people into weaving. This craft was taught in prisons, homes for the poor, and orphanages.

All this gave rise to those social changes in European society that were described in such detail by the classics of Marxism - the alienation of the worker from his labor, the sweatshop system, strikes, lockouts and other methods of class struggle. And indeed, we see that long before historical materialism, weavers were at the forefront of the workers’ struggle for their rights. Here you have the weavers' strike in Flanders in 1245, and the weavers' revolt in the Flemish city of Ypres in 1280, and the Luditsk pogroms of weaving machines of the 18th century. Then came the Eleonian uprisings of the thirties of the 19th century, and the first revolutionary councils in Ivanovo in 1905. All this was the work of weavers. So, if you like, the loom is the main engine of the class struggle, if there really was one.

In 1580, Anton Moller improved the weaving machine; now it was possible to produce several pieces of material. And in 1733, the Englishman John Kay created the first mechanical shuttle for a hand-held machine. Now there was no need to manually throw the shuttle, and now it was possible to obtain wide strips of material; the machine was already operated by one person.

In 1786, the mechanical loom was invented. Its author is Edmund Cartwright, Doctor of Divinity at Oxford University. This was preceded by a number of attempts to mechanize the weaving process by various mechanics.

Cartwright managed to mechanize all the basic operations of hand weaving: inserting the shuttle through the shed; raising of healds and formation of a shed; surfing the weft thread to the edge of the fabric with a reed; winding the warp threads; eating the waste fabric.

Cartwright's invention of the power loom was the final necessary link in the 18th century's technical revolution in weaving. It caused a radical restructuring of the technology and organization of production, the emergence of a whole series of machines and machines that made it possible to sharply increase labor productivity in the textile industry. Despite the fact that Cartwright did not create a fundamentally new weaving system and his mechanical loom retained all the basic features of a handloom, receiving only a mechanical drive from an engine, the significance of this invention was extremely great. It created all the conditions for the displacement of the manufacturing (manual) method of production by large-scale factory industry.

The victory of mechanical weaving over hand weaving led to the death of millions of hand weavers on the European and Asian continents.

Cartwright's power loom, for all its merits in its original form, was not yet so advanced as to pose a serious threat to hand weaving. Taking into account the eternal principle “the best is the enemy of the good,” work began to improve the Cartwright loom. Among others, it is worth noting the mechanical loom of William Horrocks, which differed from the Cartwright loom mainly by raising the healds from the eccentrics (1803). In 1813, about 2,400 were already working in England mechanical looms, mainly the Horrocks system.

A turning point in the history of mechanical weaving is the appearance in 1822 of the loom of engineer Roberts, a famous inventor in various fields of mechanics. He created that rational form of the loom, which fully complies with the laws of mechanics. This machine practically completed a technical revolution in weaving and created the conditions for the complete victory of machine weaving over hand weaving.

Locomotive.

The history of modern steam locomotives is integrally connected with the first experiments in creating compact steam engines. In this matter, at the end of the 18th century, great success was achieved by the famous English engineer James Watt. Undoubtedly, Richard knew about Watt's experiments, and in turn made some changes to the design of the traditional steam engine. He boldly proposed increasing the operating steam pressure several times in order to further reduce the dimensions of steam units. As a result, his invention could already be installed on small crews, which Trevithick began constructing. The young engineer did not pay attention to the indignation of his eminent colleagues, including Watt himself, who considered it crazy to work with steam engines under such pressure.

However, already in 1801, Richard built a self-propelled carriage powered by a steam engine, which created a real sensation on the streets of the small town of Camborne. Locals immediately dubbed the invention “Trevithick’s dragon,” and a large crowd of onlookers gathered every day to watch the slow movements of this mechanism through the narrow streets.

But the prototype car could not amuse the public for long - one day Trevithick stopped in front of a tavern to have a snack. At the same time, he forgot to reduce the fire heating the boiler, as a result of which the available water boiled away, the container became hot, and the entire carriage burned down in a few minutes. Nevertheless, the cheerful optimist Trevithick was not at all embarrassed by this incident, and he continued his experiments with new zeal. Richard was working on creating a new wagon that could run on cast iron rails and carry cargo. Today this bulky design makes many people smile, but one of the first steam locomotives was successfully tested on February 21, 1804. During this presentation, Trevithick's mechanism successfully transported carts of coal, the total weight of which was as much as 10 tons.

But this was not enough for the restless engineer, and he built a new testing ground. A site was chosen on one of the outskirts of London, which was surrounded by a high fence. Inside, Richard built a ring track and launched a new locomotive called Catch Me If You Can. It is impossible not to note Trevithick’s successes in commerce - everyone could see or ride the outlandish invention for a fee. Richard hoped that factory owners who could offer money for a new invention would be interested in his experiences, but he was mistaken. At the same time, an accident occurred on his small railway - one of the rails burst, as a result of which the self-propelled mechanism received great damage. Richard had already lost interest in this prototype, so he did not fix it, but turned his energetic mind to developing new designs.

Bike

In 1817, the German inventor Baron Karl Draize created the first scooter, which he called a “walking machine.” The scooter had a handlebar and a saddle. The scooter was named after its inventor, trezina, and this word is still used in Russian today. In 1818, a patent was issued for this invention.

In 1839-1840 the invention was improved. Scottish blacksmith Kirkpatrick MacMillan added pedals to it. The rear wheel was attached to the pedal by metal rods, the pedal pushed the wheel, the cyclist was between the front and rear wheels and controlled the bicycle using a handlebar, which in turn was attached to the front wheel. A few years later, the English engineer Thompson patented inflatable bicycle tires. However, the tires were technically imperfect and were not widespread at that time. Mass production of bicycles with pedals began in 1867. Pierre Michaud came up with the name “bicycle”.

In the 70s of the 19th century, the so-called “penny-farthing” bicycles became popular, which got their name due to the proportionality of the wheels, since the farthing coin was much smaller than a penny. There were pedals on the hub of the larger front wheel, and the saddle was on top of them. The bicycle was quite dangerous due to the fact that the center of gravity was shifted to the center. An alternative to the penny-farthing were three-wheeled scooters, which were very common at the time.

The invention of the metal spoked wheel is the next important step in the evolution of bicycles. This successful design was proposed by the inventor Cowper in 1867, and just two years later bicycles had a frame. In the late seventies, the Englishman Lawson invented a chain drive

Rover - “Wanderer” - the first bicycle similar to modern bicycles. This bicycle was made by English inventor John Kemp Starley in 1884. After just one year, mass production of these bicycles was launched. The Rover had a chain drive, had wheels of the same size, and the driver's seat was between the front and rear wheels. The bicycle has become so popular in Europe that, for example, in Polish the word means bicycle. The bicycle differed from its predecessor in safety and convenience. The production of bicycles grew into the production of cars, the Rover concern was created, which existed until 2005 and went bankrupt.

In 1888, Scotsman Boyd Dunlop invented rubber tires, which became widespread. Unlike patented rubber tires, they were technically more advanced and reliable. Before this, bicycles were often called “bone shakers,” but with rubber tires, cycling became smoother. Driving has become much more convenient. The 1990s were called the golden age of bicycles.

A year later, pedal brakes and a freewheel mechanism were invented. This mechanism made it possible not to pedal while the bike was spinning on its own. The handbrake was invented around this time, but it did not become widely used until much later.

In 1878 the first folding bicycle was made. Aluminum bicycles were invented in the nineties.

The first recumbent, a bicycle that allows the cyclist to ride recumbent or reclining, was invented in 1895. Nine years later, the Peugeot concern began mass production of recambents. And in 1915, bicycles with rear and front suspension began to be produced for the Italian army.

Airship.

The word "airship" means "controlled" in French. When the hot air balloon was invented, and this happened more than two centuries ago, in 1783 (Jacques Charles), in France, it seemed that there was no need to wish for more.

In 1852, Henri Giffard built the first airship.

The shell of Giffard's airship was shaped like a pointed cigar, 44 meters long and 12 meters in diameter at its thickest part. A net was thrown over the shell. A wooden beam was attached to the network from below, and to it was a small platform on which the boiler, steam engine and coal reserves were placed. Here, in front of the boiler, was the aeronaut’s seat, surrounded by light railings. The airship was supposed to be propelled by a three-bladed propeller with a diameter of almost three and a half meters.

The airship's cylinder was filled with illuminating gas, light (lighter than air), but flammable and explosive. Therefore, the inventor had to think carefully about safety measures. After all, a flame was burning near the shell with such an insidious gas, and even a small spark could cause an explosion and fire! Giffard carefully shielded the boiler furnace from all sides, and directed the chimney not upward, as usual, but downward. As a result, it was necessary to create artificial draft in the pipe using a jet of steam.

The day of September 23, 1852 turned out to be windy, and yet Giffard decided to fly, so strong was his desire to quickly try out the airship. He climbed onto the platform and lit a fire in the firebox of the boiler. Plumes of black smoke poured out of the chimney. At the command of the aeronaut, the airship was given freedom, and it smoothly went up. The designer, standing behind the fence, waved his hand.

After a couple of minutes, the balloon rose to a height of almost two kilometers! The inventor gave full speed to the machine. And although the propeller was spinning quickly, the airship could not overcome the headwind. We only managed to deviate slightly to the side and go at a certain angle to the course. Having convinced himself of this, the aeronaut put out the fire in the firebox and landed safely on the ground.

Henri Giffard did not manage to fly in a circle as he wanted. The speed of his airship turned out to be very low, only 11 kilometers per hour. Only in complete calm could the ship become controllable. He was unable to fight even a weak wind. This caused great disappointment among the inventor's contemporaries. And he himself, understandably, was dissatisfied with the result of the first experiment.

Giffard had no money left for further experiments, and he turned to other inventions. In particular, he created a steam injection pump, which found wide application. This innovation (it is still used in technology today) brought Giffard wealth. And then, having become a millionaire, he returned to the airship again.

Giffard's second controlled balloon was significantly larger than the first: one and a half times longer and with a volume of 3200 cubic meters.

Giffard took to the air not alone, but together with his assistant. At the height, some of the gas came out of the shell (which was normal), but, having decreased in volume, the huge balloon suddenly began to crawl out of the mesh that covered it. Giffard, seeing this, hastened to lower the airship and did it on time. As soon as the platform with the balloonists touched the ground, the “cigar” slipped out of the net, soared into the sky and disappeared into the clouds! Despite such an unsuccessful experience, the persistent inventor decided to build an even larger airship, almost a hundred times larger than his first balloon! This would make it possible to install a powerful steam engine on it.

The project of the giant airship was developed extremely carefully and in detail, but Giffard was never able to implement it. Soon disaster struck: the inventor began to go blind, and then completely blind, turning into a helpless invalid. Life without creative work has lost all meaning for him.

In mid-April 1882, Henri Giffard was found dead in his apartment with signs of poisoning. A talented inventor committed suicide. He left a will, according to which he transferred all his enormous fortune partly to French scientists and partly to the poor people of his hometown of Paris.

Meanwhile, the time to resolve the airship problem was approaching. Two years after Giffard's death, his compatriots, military engineers C. Renard and A. Krebs, built a balloon with an electric motor and galvanic batteries. It was an airship that, for the first time in the world, was able to make a circular flight and return to the starting point. And when a reliable and fairly lightweight gasoline engine appeared (at the beginning of the last century), airships began to fly confidently and became truly controllable, as they should have been.

Vacuum cleaner

On June 8, 1869, American inventor Ives McGaffney patented the world's first vacuum cleaner, which he called the Whirlwind. In its upper part there was a handle connected by a belt drive to the fan. The handle was moved by hand. The vacuum cleaner was light and compact, but inconvenient to use due to the need to simultaneously turn the handle and push the device along the floor. McGaffney founded the Boston-based American Carpet Cleaning Company and began selling his vacuum cleaners for $25 apiece (a considerable amount in those days, considering that at that time 1 American dollar was about 23 grams of silver)

New time - this period in the life of society is characterized by the decomposition of feudalism, the emergence and development of capitalism, which is associated with progress in the economy, technology, and growth in labor productivity. People's consciousness and worldview as a whole are changing. Life gives birth to new geniuses. Science, primarily experimental and mathematical natural science, is developing rapidly. This period is called the era of the scientific revolution. Science is playing an increasingly significant role in the life of society. At the same time, mechanics occupies a dominant place in science. It was in mechanics that thinkers saw the key to the secrets of the entire universe.

Related information.

loom. Name of the first inventor loom unknown. However, the principle laid down by this man is still alive: the fabric consists of two systems of threads located mutually perpendicular, and the task of the machine is to intertwine them.

First fabrics, made more than six thousand years ago, during the Neolithic era, have not reached us. However, evidence of their existence is loom parts- you can see it.
At first, the threads were woven using manual force. Even Leonardo da Vinci, no matter how hard he tried, could not invent a mechanical loom. Until the 18th century, this task seemed insurmountable. And only in 1733, the young English clothier John Kay made the first mechanical (aka airplane) shuttle for a handloom. The invention eliminated the need to manually throw the shuttle and made it possible to produce wide fabrics on a machine operated by one person (previously two were required).
Kay's work was continued by the most successful weaving reformer, Edmund Cartwright. It is curious that he was a pure humanist by training, an Oxford graduate with a Master of Arts degree. In 1785, Cartwright received a patent for mechanical loom with a foot drive and built a spinning and weaving factory for 20 such devices in Yorkshire. But he did not stop there: in 1789 he patented a combing machine for wool, and in 1992 - a machine for twisting ropes and ropes.
Cartwright's mechanical loom in its original form was still so imperfect that it did not pose any serious threat to hand weaving. Therefore, until the first years of the 19th century, the position of weavers was incomparably better than that of spinners; their incomes showed only a barely noticeable downward trend. As early as 1793, “muslin weaving was a gentleman's craft. The weavers in all their appearance resembled officers in the highest rank: in fashionable boots, a ruffled shirt and with a cane in their hand, they went for their work and sometimes brought it home in a carriage.”
In 1807, the British Parliament sent a memorandum to the government, which stated that the inventions of the Master of Arts contributed to the improvement of the country's welfare (and this is true, England was not for nothing then known as the “workshop of the world”). In 1809, the House of Commons allocated 10 thousand pounds sterling to Cartwright - completely unthinkable money at that time. After which the inventor retired and settled on a small farm, where he worked on improving agricultural machines.

Cartwright's machine almost immediately began to be improved and modified. And no wonder, because profit weaving factories they gave a serious one, and not only in England. In the Russian Empire, for example, thanks to the development of weaving in the 19th century, Lodz turned from a small village into a huge city by the standards of that time with a population of several hundred thousand people. Millions of fortunes in the empire were often made precisely in the factories of this industry - just remember the Prokhorovs or Morozovs.
By the 1930s, a lot of technical improvements had been added to the Cartwright machine. As a result, there were more and more such machines in factories, and they were serviced by fewer and fewer workers.
New obstacles stood in the way of a steady increase in labor productivity. The most labor-intensive tasks when working on mechanical machines were changing and charging the shuttle. For example, when making the simplest calico on a Platt loom, the weaver spent up to 30% of his time on these operations. Moreover, he had to constantly monitor the breakage of the main thread and stop the machine to correct the defects. Given this state of affairs, it was not possible to expand the service area. Only after the Englishman Northrop came up with a way to automatically charge a shuttle in 1890 did factory weaving make a real breakthrough. Already in 1996, Northrop developed and brought to market the first automatic loom. This subsequently allowed thrifty factory owners to save a lot on wages. Then came a serious competitor to an automatic loom - a weaving machine without a shuttle at all, which greatly increased the ability of one person to service several devices. Modern weaving machines are developing in the computer and automatic directions familiar to many technologies. But the most important thing was done more than two centuries ago by the inquisitive Cartwright.

Who is who in the world of discoveries and inventions Sitnikov Vitaly Pavlovich

Who invented the loom?

The loom is one of the inventions that appeared among different peoples independently of each other.

In Asia, weaving has been known since ancient times. The first loom was discovered in this part of the world. The raw materials for the threads were animal wool and fibers of various plants, as well as natural silk.

Weaving looms began to be used throughout Asia. Weavers quickly learned to decorate their products with different patterns, which were woven from multi-colored threads. At the same time, people began to paint fabrics with the juice of various plants. This is how weaving turned into an art.

One of the oldest methods of processing fabric is batik - the art of painting on fabric, created in Southeast Asia. The secret to making batik was to apply black lines of the design onto cotton fabric. Then they were covered with wax, and the places where there was no wax were painted.

When the paint dried, the wax was washed off. By varying the width of the wax strips, it was possible to change the resulting color. The design of each canvas turned out to be completely unique.

But the design can be applied to fabric in other ways. One of the most ancient is the heel. The design was first cut out on a wooden plank and then printed on fabric. This method has been known for several thousand years.

Weaving was known not only to the peoples of Europe and Asia. In America, the ancient Incas already knew it. The art of weaving they invented is preserved today by the Indians of South America.

These are all examples of how long a person has been using a loom. The patterns on the woven material are as numerous as the weaving methods.

Today, weaving looms can be seen in the homes of folk craftsmen who remain faithful to the past, as well as in museums. Some museums even hire old weavers to weave fabrics according to ancient patterns and thereby help preserve this art.

This text is an introductory fragment. From the book 100 Great Inventions author Ryzhov Konstantin Vladislavovich

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